Author Archive | admin

 Belinda Alexandra

Forbidden love. Family secrets. A twist of fate. The stunning new generational saga from Belinda Alexandra, bestselling author of TUSCAN ROSE.

In New Orleans – the city of genteel old houses and ancient oak trees covered in Spanish moss, of seductive night life, of Creole culture, voodoo and jazz – two women separated by time and tragedy will find each other at last.
Amanda, orphaned as a child and suffering the loss of her beloved grandmother, has left Sydney in search of a family she never knew.
Ruby, constrained by the expectations of society and class, is carrying a lifetime of secrets. Amanda’s arrival sparks revelations long buried: a double life, a forbidden love, and a loss that cannot be forgotten.
Southern Ruby is a sweeping story of love, passion, family and honour. Alternating in time between the 1950s and the eve of Hurricane Katrina, it is also a tribute to a city heady with mystery, music, and superstition, which has borne the tumults of race and class and the fury of nature, but has never given up hope.

 Tony Park

A heart-racing thriller from the master of adventure. An assassination. A stolen baby. A race to the death.

Durban, South Africa, a car is hijacked. Suzanne Fessey fights back and kills one thief but the other, wounded, escapes with her baby on board. In pursuit of the missing vehicle and baby are helicopter tracker pilot Nia Carras from the air, and Mike Dunn, a nearby wildlife researcher, from the ground.

But South Africa’s police have bigger problems: a bomb has gone off in Durban, killing the visiting American Ambassador, and chaos has descended on Kwa-Zulu Natal.
As the missing baby is tracked through the wild game reserves from Zululand to Zimbabwe, Mike and Nia come to realise that the war on terror has invaded their part of the world.

 Harlan Coben

Ten years after the high-profile kidnapping of two young boys, only one returns home in Harlan Coben’s next gripping thriller, to be published in September 2016.

A decade ago, kidnappers grabbed two boys from wealthy families and demanded ransom, then went silent. No trace of the boys ever surfaced. For ten years their families have been left with nothing but painful memories and a quiet desperation for the day that has finally, miraculously arrived: Myron Bolitar and his friend Win believe they have located one of the boys, now a teenager. Where has he been for ten years, and what does he know about the day, more than half a life ago, when he was taken? And most critically: What can he tell Myron and Win about the fate of his missing friend? Drawing on his singular talent, Harlan Coben delivers an explosive and deeply moving thriller about friendship, family, and the meaning of home.

Cathy McLennan

‘Everyone knows that some of those kids are innocent … your dilemma is not whether the kids are innocent, but which of the kids are innocent.’

When Cathy McLennan first steps into Townsville’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service as a young graduate she isn’t expecting a major murder case to land on her desk. The accused are four teenage boys whose family connections stretch across the water to Palm Island. As she battles to prove herself in the courtroom, Cathy realises that the truth is far more complex than she first thought. She starts to question who are the criminals and who are the victims.

Saltwater tells the compelling story of one lawyer’s fight for justice among the beauty and the violence of this tropical paradise.

 Sian Evans

In the aftermath of the First World War, the previously strict hierarchies of the British class system were weakened. For a number of ambitious, spirited women, this was the chance they needed to slip through the cracks and take their place at the top of society as the great hostesses of the time. In an age when the place of women was uncertain, becoming a hostess was not a chore, but a career choice, and though some of the hostesses’ backgrounds were surprisingly humble, their aspirations were anything but. During the inter-war years these extraordinary women ruled over London society from their dining tables – entertaining everyone from the Mosleys to the Mitfords, from millionaires to maharajahs, from film stars to royalty – and their influence can still be felt today. Great Hostesses looks at the lives of six of these remarkable women, including Lady Astor, who went on to become the first female MP, and Mrs Greville, who cultivated relationships with Edward VII, as well as Lady Londonderry, Lady Cunard, Laura Corrigan and Lady Colefax.

Written with wit, verve and heart, Great Hostesses is the story of a society on the brink of revolution, and the extraordinary women who helped it happen.

 John Le Carre

“Out of the secret world I once knew, I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit. First comes the imagining, then the search for reality. Then back to the imagining, and to the desk where I’m sitting now.””
From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carrehas always written from the heart of modern times.In this, his first memoir, le Carre is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he’s writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven s Fifth, visiting Rwanda s museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide, celebrating New Year s Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command, interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev, listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, meeting with two former heads of the KGB, watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations, or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in”The Constant Gardener,” le Carre endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.
Best of all, le Carre gives us a glimpse of a writer s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

 Baba Schwartz

Baba Schwartz’s story began fifteen years before the Holocaust could have been imagined. It is the story of a spirited girl in a warm and loving Jewish family, living a normal life in a small town in eastern Hungary. In The May Beetles, Baba describes the innocence and excitement of her childhood, remembering her early years with verve and emotion, remarkably unaffected by what took place after the Nazis arrived.

What did happen was unspeakable horror. Baba describes the shattering of her family and their community from 1944, when the Germans transported the 3000 Jews of her town to Auschwitz. She lost her father to the gas chambers, yet she and her two sisters survived this concentration camp and several others to which they were transported as slave labour. They eventually escaped the final death march and were liberated by the advancing Russian army. Baba writes about this period of horror with the same directness, freshness and honesty as she writes about her childhood.

Baba wrote this book in 1991 but only revealed the manuscript last year, when she was eighty-eight. The May Beetles, prepared with the assistance of Robert Hillman, has a story to tell that will affect all readers deeply.

 Anthony Bennett

The hilarious true adventures of two young vets dealing with all creatures (and humans!) great and small in country Australia. The life of a country vet is far from glamorous. There’s no such thing as a nine-to-five working day. You’re out in all weathers, at all times of the day and night. Moreoften than not you’re covered in smelly muck, working against the clock to save animals in critical situations – whether that’s helping a cow in distress birthing unexpectedtriplets, saving a crook dog that’s eaten a bucket load of sheep fat, a horse needing a risky operation far from the surgery clinic, or a cat that you resuscitate againstall the odds. Best mates Anthony Bennett and James Carroll wouldn’t have it any other way. Calving Straps and Zombie Cats is the adventures of two young vets dealing with all creatures (and humans!) great and small in country Australia. With memorable characters, some heartstopping moments, and a healthy dose of humour, these stories of life behind the scenes in a busy mixed country practice will touch your heart as well as tickle your funny-bone.You’ll be hooked till the very last page.

 Mary O’Connor

From Darwin to Pearl Harbour, Sydney to Papua New Guinea, a compelling story of courage, honour and a great love set against the epic backdrop of the Second World War.
Eighteen-year-old Junie Wallace is a smart girl and, with her two brothers away at war and her third brother just killed in action, she knows there is only one way to save the family farm for her grieving parents. Unfortunately, that solution involves marrying the unscrupulous Ernest, and breaking the heart of the young drover she loves, Michael. But the war is looming ever closer, and when Pearl Harbour brings the threat of Japanese aggression to Australian shores, the fates of many becomes inextricably interwoven.
From the explosive battles of the Pacific campaign to the desperate fighting in the Papuan New Guinea rainforest; the dancehall gaiety of Sydney’s Trocadero to the terror of the Darwin bombings, this epic family saga brings home the importance of mateship and of fighting for what you believe in, even when impossible odds seem stacked against you, even when all seems lost…
Worth Fighting For is a resounding testament to the enduring force of love: a reminder of what can be achieved if you draw on your reserves of courage and listen to the truth in your heart.

 Kate Mildenhall

Kate and Harriet are best friends, growing up together on an isolated Australian cape in the 1880s. As daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. But one moment in McPhail’s hut will change the course of their lives forever.

Inspired by a true story, Skylarking is a stunning debut novel about friendship, love and loss, one that questions what it is to remember and how tempting it can be to forget.